Marian stood at the lip of the tower's protective field, her crystalline hands folded tightly behind her back. The edge of the dome shimmered faintly in her aether vision, like a soap bubble stretched over a cliff's edge and beyond it, the Red Waste burned in shades of crimson and gold.

And in the middle of it all… he moved.

Thorne.

The boy, no, not a boy, not really anymore, was dancing between the three Devourers like he was born in flame.

He didn't use his weapons. Not a blade. Not a wand.

He didn't need to.

He commanded.

She watched as he kicked off a floating platform of aether, solidified midair with a flicker of thought, and hurled himself into the sky. Behind him, red motes followed like a spiral of embers, pulled not by gravitational currents, but by allegiance.

He flared.

She could see it.

Every motion, every attack, he wasn't just drawing aether.

He was bending it.

One of the smaller Devourers lunged from the side, teeth spiraling open, molten armor flexing. Thorne didn't dodge. He flared his aura, which she was pretty sure he did unconsciously, and a shield of condensed motes formed before him, dense and white-hot.

The beast slammed into it and was repelled, tossed backward like it had struck a wall of light.

Marian's lips parted, but no sound came.

That shield wasn't even a spell. Just ambient aether, weaponized with sheer control. Instinct. Will.

He landed on another invisible platform, spun, and loosed a barrage of spears from both hands, twenty shards of aether, jagged and radiant, slamming into the creatures in waves. They screamed and twisted in pain, flailing through the air.

And all the while, the motes obeyed him.

They weren't being used. They were aiding.

Assisting.

Every time he moved, they surged ahead, forming new platforms, new weapons, new armor. He didn't even seem to notice. It was like watching a storm follow a conductor.

She shivered.

Not from the heat.

From the realization.

He's not casting spells. He's not shaping magic. He's just… speaking. And the world listens.

Another Devourer barreled toward him, and Thorne lifted a hand, just one, and clenched his fist.

The creature's chest detonated.

Aetheric Explosion. Without a chant. Without even a real casting gesture. Just intent.

The rawness of his technique was obvious, his formations sloppy, his transitions unpredictable, but the power?

Gods.

Marian's eyes narrowed, trying to measure it.

She'd spent decades honing her skill. Shaping sigils. Learning restraint. Her strength was earned, brick by brick, spell by spell.

But this...

This was something else.

He wasn't even trying.

And he was already overwhelming.

One of the Devourers tried to flank him. The other coiled to strike from behind.

Marian stiffened.

But Thorne just smiled.

And in a burst of light, he split, momentarily forming a duplicate made from solid light, an echo of himself, which intercepted the flanker with a blinding flash. The other Devourer received a wall of compressed motes to the face, slammed point-blank by a pulse of energy that broke its jaw.

Thorne laughed.

Marian's breath caught.

It wasn't mocking.

It wasn't even gleeful.

It was…

Childlike.

Like a kid playing with toys. With fire. With gods.

His fangs gleamed in the heat. His eyes glowed like twin stars.

She wasn't sure if he was smiling at his power… or at the destruction it caused.

And for the first time since discovering what Thorne truly was, Marian was afraid.

Not because he'd turn on her.

Not because he was unstable.

But because of what it would mean if he wasn't restrained.

If the world saw what he could do.

If the Empire discovered him.

If the Guilds marked him.

If the Purifiers found out he was more than just a rogue student.

She exhaled slowly, feeling the crystalline tightness in her chest.

Thank the dead gods for Aetherhold.

For its chains.

For its rules.

For the need to hide.

He didn't realize it, but every assignment, every class, every secret identity… they weren't just for his survival.

They were for everyone else's.

She looked down at her trembling hands.

He's not ready. And the world's not ready for him.

It was her job now.

To teach him.

To guide him.

To anchor him.

She looked back at the battlefield, where Thorne stood atop the smoking remains of another beast, red motes dancing around him like celebrants at a bonfire.

His smile had faded now. But his eyes were still burning.

She swallowed hard.

And maybe, one day, to stop him.

Marian didn't breathe.

She couldn't.

Thorne moved through the Red Waste like he belonged to it. Not like a visitor, not like a warrior.

Like a force.

The three remaining Devourers, massive, ancient things born of molten leyfire and stone, snapped and lunged with fury. But to him, they may as well have been moths.

He didn't evade with haste, he simply wasn't there anymore. Each time they surged toward him, his form shimmered and streaked through the sky, bounding from platform to platform on the trails of raw aether he conjured from nothing.

Not from spell circles. Not from memorized sequences or sigil arrays.

He was shaping reality through will alone.

Marian's crystalline fingers twitched at her sides. She could feel the motes herself, dense and volatile, tainted by fire, trembling with heat. Any elderborn worth their soul could bend raw aether. She was no exception.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

But not like this.

Not without strain.

Not without form.

She'd trained for decades to reach her level of mastery. Each spell she cast, each ability she mastered, each shield, blade, barrier, was earned through endless repetition and pain. She'd spent her youth breaking herself against the fundamentals of shaping.

But Thorne?

Thorne was redefining them.

Every strike was instinct. Every motion, effortless. His body moved ahead of his mind, reacting, anticipating, commanding the battlefield with the elegance of a hurricane. The ambient aether didn't just obey him.

It worshipped him.

More than once, she watched red fire-aspected motes dart toward his attacks, joining them, enhancing them, as though eager to be used.

And his aura...

Marian swallowed hard, eyes wide.

It was glowing brighter than ever, tinged with gold and crimson. Not just reflecting the aspected motes around him but altering them.

Purifying them.

That wasn't supposed to happen.

Fire-aspected aether was volatile. Dangerous. Infamous for corroding aether cores and twisting abilities. It was the first lesson she had planned to teach him, how to filter the ambient aether, how to cleanse and regulate it through one's own core to prevent contamination.

But Thorne?

He wasn't filtering the fire aspect.

He was dominating it.

His aura was so strong, so absolute, it converted the motes on contact. Where they touched him, they changed, glowing a brilliant white tinged with his unique energy. They weren't altering him.

He was altering them.

She didn't know if it was because of his evolved Aetherbound trait, or his unknown lineage, or simply the raw, terrifying nature of his core.

And that unsettled her.

Because if she didn't understand him, if she couldn't predict the rules he operated under, how could she teach him?

How could she control him?

A fresh geyser of ash and flame erupted from the sands.

More Devourers.

Five, maybe six this time.

Bigger.

Angrier.

Marian stepped forward instinctively, ready to intervene.

But Thorne just laughed.

He clapped his hands, clapped, as though someone had brought him dessert and launched himself skyward like a comet of blazing light.

"Dead gods," she whispered, frozen.

He was radiant now. Not just lit by the aether, but fueled by it. His smile was wild, his fangs gleaming like knives.

And then...

"Marian!" he shouted mid-flight, twisting in the air with giddy energy. "I leveled up!"

She blinked.

What?

"I leveled up, Marian! It's been so long! I forgot how it felt!"

He was beaming, spinning midair like a child discovering flight. His aura pulsed again, briefly, and she could feel the surge from where she stood. Raw growth. New stats. Unlocked potential.

Marian managed a smile. It felt brittle.

"Congratulations," she murmured, her voice shaky even to her own ears.

The battlefield lit up again, and Thorne dove toward the monsters without hesitation, his laughter echoing across the Waste.

She stayed still, hands clenched at her sides, crystalline heart pounding in silence.

She had brought him here to teach him.

But it was becoming abundantly clear…

That she had a long way to go.

Not just to train him.

But to restrain him.

Marian couldn't move.

It wasn't paralysis. Not exactly. She could walk forward. Speak. Even raise a hand to defend herself if she needed to.

But something older, deeper than muscle and nerve, had rooted her in place. Watching Thorne move through the field of Devourers, she felt like a pilgrim glimpsing the divine and finding it monstrous.

He laughed again, light and sharp, and brought both hands together in another Aetheric Explosion, the blast so bright that it left her vision swimming. Two of the creatures were obliterated instantly, their hulking frames evaporating in a firestorm of red and silver light. The third tried to flee.

Thorne didn't even chase it.

He just looked at it and the aether obeyed.

A whip of condensed motes snapped from the air and snared the beast's limb. Another pulled it back. A third curled around its throat. The Devourer screeched, writhing and Thorne stepped forward with the slow confidence of a king crossing his throne room.

And then he stopped.

He didn't kill it.

He didn't even injure it further.

He simply turned away, dismissing the bindings with a flick of his fingers. The aether dispersed like smoke. The monster lay in the dust, trembling, watching him with a strange stillness. As if waiting.

Why didn't he kill it?

Marian's mind swirled with questions.

Thorne, radiant and panting with exhilaration, walked back toward the center of the battlefield, trailing light and scorched earth. His aura still pulsed, red now, not entirely his own. The fire-aspected motes still clung to him like children to a mother.

And he didn't even notice.

He doesn't feel it. Doesn't sense the corruption. Doesn't realize how close he is to being changed. Shaped by the Waste, by the very energy he wields.

She should've been shouting warnings. She should've stopped him ten minutes ago.

But she hadn't.

Because part of her, an unspoken, shameful part, had been too fascinated.

What are you, Thorne Silverbane?

He hadn't just broken her understanding of aetheric manipulation, he had demolished it. Reshaped it. Rewritten it in real time. Where she had spent decades learning to guide raw aether with patience and structure, he wielded it like an extension of his soul.

And it didn't just obey.

It sang for him.

She felt it in the air. The motes around him weren't just responding, they were thrilled. Each one alight, vibrating with joy, with purpose. Like being used by Thorne wasn't servitude, but a blessing.

And that, that terrified her most of all.

Because gods didn't ask for permission.

They simply were.

And she was standing on the edge of something divine. Something terrifyingly divine.

Her crystal skin prickled as if under a forge. Not from the Waste's heat.

From reverence.

A part of her wanted to kneel.

What am I thinking?

She shook the thought from her mind, horrified. But the sensation didn't leave.

It clung to her like the motes clung to him.

She watched Thorne now, not just as a teacher or fellow Elderborn, but as something smaller. She could not imagine what he would become in ten years. Or twenty. Or fifty.

Because already...

Already, he was too much.

And no one knew.

No one.

Except her.

Then he turned.

His smile was radiant, childlike. His fangs glinted in the sunlight.

He looked like he'd just finished a particularly thrilling game.

And yet...

His eyes were empty.

Not cruel. Not kind. Just… distant.

Like the boy inside had stepped out for a while, and something older had worn his skin for the battle.

And in that moment, Marian realized:

He wasn't fighting for pride.

Or glory.

Or even training.

He was fighting because it was the only time he felt truly free.

And that was truly horrifying.

Because if this was the only place he could breathe, then what would happen when the world tried to suffocate him again?

Thorne was circling the last Devourer like a cat toying with a crippled bird.

He didn't even bother with full strikes anymore, just flicks of pressure, pulses of raw aether bent into harmless projections that burst beside the beast's maw or buckled its fire aspected plates. It was clearly wounded, and yet he hadn't gone for the kill. Not yet.

Marian narrowed her gaze.

He wasn't fighting.

He was practicing.

Each flick of his hand was a test. A theory in motion. Could he bend ambient aether in that angle? Could he manifest a platform beneath the creature's moving limbs? Could he draw red-aspected motes and slow them just enough to make a hovering wall?

It was clinical.

Detached.

And just a little bit cruel.

She stepped forward, her jaw set.

That's enough.

Thorne darted behind the creature, the trailing light of his aura dancing around his pale, angular frame. Even under the scalding sun, even surrounded by violence, he looked like something carved from starlight and forgotten nightmares. His white hair clung to his face, and his glowing, silver-veined skin shimmered with power.

Fangs bared, he laughed again.

"I was just getting to the good part."

Marian didn't respond.

She raised her hand.

The red motes around her parted like water.

Her rings pulsed, softly, precisely, and beneath the sand, the aether twisted.

The Devourer reared as if sensing the shift. It turned to her, confusion rippling through its ruined body.

Marian's voice was quiet.

"Observe, Thorne."

With a delicate twist of her fingers, she reached into the creature's core, not physically, but aetherically. Through the motes, through its very being. She wove a lattice, a spider's web of control points, inside the Devourer's body.

It wasn't raw power.

It was precision.

Each strand of aether was placed perfectly, aligned with the creature's natural flow, then shifted, reconfigured. The construct grew, complex, elegant. A clockwork mechanism of death.

Thorne watched in silence.

Then...

She clenched her fist.

The beast shuddered once.

Its core didn't explode.

It collapsed.

Like a star folding in on itself, the aether inside it inverted, imploding silently, without fire or drama. The Devourer sagged, crumbled into dust, its massive body losing all cohesion as its anchor was unraveled.

Only silence remained.

Thorne blinked, tilting his head.

"Well, that's one way to end a game."

His voice was light, but there was a hint of disappointment in it.

He drifted back toward her, a silhouette of angles and unnatural grace, his aura still flickering with the remnants of red aether. The inhuman beauty of his elderborn form made him look less like a student and more like a fallen god, casually descending from his throne.

"I was experimenting," he said with a small pout. "You always kill the fun."

Marian didn't answer right away.

She had just exerted her full will, crafted a flawless internal construct, disrupted a core from within. It should've felt… triumphant.

Instead, she had felt the motes resist her. Not reject her entirely, no. But delay. Hesitate.

She had never had Thorne's raw influence over aether, but it had always felt like a companion, attentive, if not eager. Now, standing in his presence, the ambient aether barely acknowledged her.

It was as if he overshadowed her very soul.

That thought chilled her far more than the Waste's heat ever could.

Marian arched a brow. "You were tormenting a dying creature."

"I was refining my technique," he countered, grinning, though the glint in his glowing eyes was too sharp, too feral.

She didn't rise to the bait.

"That's enough for today. Back to the tower."

He sighed dramatically, then turned, the motes still swirling around him like courtiers.

But as he walked, Marian remained still for a moment longer, staring at the place where the last Devourer had fallen.

Her mind still buzzed with possibilities.

With questions.

And the ever-growing realization that Thorne Silverbane wasn't a student.

He was a problem.

And she had very little time left to solve him.

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